But What Does It Mean?

I don't know why I'm having a hard time saying this. I don't know why I'm so embarrassed. Maybe it's because I think I should already know what it means. Alas, I do not. So to set things right, I will be driving over to the Stanford campus once a week for ten weeks to take part in a continuing studies course called (I'm grimacing as I type) Meanings of Motherhood. Here's the description:

Although the experience of motherhood is one of the most powerful and transforming experiences a woman can have, we rarely have time to explore its meanings, ruminate on its effects on us, and write about our relationship to it. Using the multiple lenses of fiction, poetry, diaries, and nonfiction, we will explore the ways that women are transformed by their individual journey through motherhood. Particular issues that we will examine include myths and images of motherhood, two career families, traditional and non-traditional families, divorce, single mothers, and foster and adoptive parents. The writers we will read and discuss include Isabel Allende, Chitra Divakaruni, Maxine Hong Kingston, Anne Lamott, Jhumpa Lahari, Tillie Olsen, Sharon Olds, Anna Quindlen, Grace Paley, Tsuboe Sake, Alice Walker, Judith Wallerstein, Arlie Hochschild, and Virginia Woolf. Students will be asked to keep a motherhood journal of their insights, experiences, conflicts, questions, and hopes.

Of my 9,749 shortcomings, one of the worst in my inability to process as I go. I cannot begin to make proper sense of any personal situation until I am light years away from it. Which explains, in part, why so many of my current short stories include at least one 16-year-old protagonist. And why it can take me years to answer an ostensibly benign question like, "So what's going on with you?" I don't want that to happen with my parenting journey. I don't want to wake up eighteen years from now wondering what the hell just happened? And also...you know that line in "A Long December" where Adam (that's what I call him: Adam) urges you to "hold on to these moments as they pass?" I need to learn how to do that.

Or maybe I'm just looking for another excuse to buy a new notebook. You be the judge.